Social media marketing is the practice of using social media platforms and tools to promote a business and connect with existing and potential customers.
The intended outcomes can range from the somewhat abstract (like brand building) to the very specific (like selling products through social commerce).
At its core, social media marketing is about building relationships with your audience in the places they already spend their time online.
Unlike traditional advertising, social media marketing allows for two-way communication between individuals and brands. There’s also potential for building a sense of community, which creates brand loyalty.
Social marketers do a lot more than scroll through TikTok all day.
Social media marketing activities can include:
- Content planning and creation. This is the most visible component of social media marketing. It’s the art of creating appropriate types of content for each platform to connect with the audience there.
- Content scheduling and publishing. This is the task of actually getting your content onto the appropriate platforms at the appropriate time.
- Social media analytics. Using analytics tools to track how content performs, report on progress towards social media goals, and plan ways to improve overall response.
- Social listening. Using social tools to keep a virtual ear to the ground, learning what’s being said about your brand and your industry. This is also a powerful tool for competitor research.
- Community management. Connecting with followers to build a community online, then working to keep that community active and healthy by responding to messages and creating ongoing opportunities for engagement.
- Social media advertising. Using paid tools on the social networks to get your content in front of a larger audience. This may include working with influencers or external content creators.
Social networks are the second-most-popular type of website or app, topped only by chat and messaging.
Source: Hootsuite’s Global State of Digital 2022 Report (October Update)
They offer incredible reach and opportunities to engage with an audience in ways that are simply impossible in any other marketing format.
Here’s what that looks like in terms of real benefits for any brand that gets social media marketing right.
Build brand identity and awareness
From the smallest business to multinational corporations, every brand needs to stand for something if they want to connect with consumers. Social media gives you a chance to consistently show the personality behind your brand.
How do you differentiate yourself from your competitors? On social, you can participate in conversations, encourage engagement, and even interact with your audience in real time.
Create community and brand loyalty
People naturally organize themselves into communities on social media. That might mean a Facebook Group or a hashtag like #DIYTok. When brands support and engage in these communities, they gain credibility with people who are naturally inclined to be interested in their products and services.
Providing helpful resources, information, or even entertaining content on social media helps people identify with your brand. They become loyal brand advocates who make repeat purchases and spread the word about your brand through their own social media channels.
Test ideas in near real time
Social media networks are an ideal platform for testing, as the feedback gathered through social media analytics tools shows you almost immediately what works and what doesn’t in your marketing.
This allows you to refine your marketing strategy very quickly, and reveals lessons you can apply to areas of marketing beyond social, too.
Support business goals
Social media marketing doesn’t always get credit for its contribution to the bottom line. Social media can drive customers to your website and generate sales leads. Social marketing efforts can even support social commerce sales, in which customers purchase from your brand without ever leaving the social platform.
Your social media marketing team also supports (or sometimes provides) social customer service.
Source: Hootsuite 2023 Social Trends Report
Customers expect to be able to connect with your brand on social media for service and support. Having an easily accessible and responsive social care team can win back annoyed customers or provide the extra boost of confidence needed for first-time customers to complete a purchase.
There’s a social network out there to connect with every audience. These are our top picks, sorted by number of users.
Source: Hootsuite’s Global State of Digital 2022 Report (October Update)
Facebook is still the world’s most-used social platform, with 2.934 billion global active users. It’s also the “favorite” platform of the largest number of social media users. And it accounts for the vast majority (71.64%) of web traffic referrals to third-party websites.
Check out our guide to marketing on Facebook.
Instagram is the next-most-popular social network with 1.386 billion active users. It’s known to sometimes be a source of frustration for social media marketers because of its frequent feature updates and algorithm changes.
But the frustration is worth it, because nearly half (44%) of Instagram users shop weekly on the platform.
Learn more about how to market your brand on Instagram.
TikTok
TikTok has skyrocketed seemingly out of nowhere to become an incredibly important social network for marketing in the last few years. It has 1 billion active users, a year-over-year increase of 14.6%.
And here’s an interesting fact – if we’d sorted this list by average time spent on the app, TikTok would have come out on top. Users spend an average of 22.9 hours per month on the platform, more than any other social network. That addictive quality makes it an important network for brands to understand.
We’ve got all the details you need to know in our post on how to create a TikTok marketing strategy.
LinkedIn is unique on this list in that it’s a social network specifically focused on business life. That means its 875 million members are primed for business discussions and purchasing research. It’s a critical platform for anyone working in B2B, or for any companies that hire anyone, ever.
Business to consumer brands can find success on LinkedIn too. We explain all the details in our post on LInkedIn marketing for both B2B and B2C brands.
Snapchat
Snapchat may get less press than TikTok, but it’s still an important platform with 576 million active users. It’s far from fading into obscurity – in fact, the platform is still growing, adding 38 million users from Q4 2021 to Q4 2022.
Snapchat is particularly useful for brands targeting an audience ages 18 to 24. We explain all the details in our post on how to use Snapchat for business.
Twitter has been in a bit of turmoil since its purchase by Elon Musk in October 2022. But social marketers still have the network’s 544 million active users on their radar, and its value as a marketing platform remains strong heading into 2024.
Twitter is especially useful for brands looking to participate in real-time trends and conversations, as we explain in our Twitter marketing guide.
Pinterest has the lowest number of active users on this list at 433 million